I
love cooking best when the cooking’s a little bit of a challenge –
when I’m prepping a meal for friends, or trying out a new recipe, or
experimenting with some bizarre exotic ingredient: when I’m cooking
for fun, that is. But when it’s for the simple and rather dull reason
that it’s 7 pm and I haven’t had a bite to eat since noontime, and
my stomach’s so cranky at the lack of food that it’s threatening to
auto-digest, cooking feels like a chore, and fun’s the last thing on
my mind.On nights like
these, I want food that’s fast, filling and easy.

Even
if you’re the sort of person who loves reading cookbooks for kicks,
there are days when you find yourself standing in the kitchen come
dinner time, brain so distracted by the persistent rumblings in your
stomach, that you can’t for the life of you figure out how to make the
hunger go away in the quickest – but still satisfying, of course –
manner possible.For times
like these, it’s good to have a few no-brainer quickie “recipes”
on hand …

1
rice redux

On
an evening when you’ve got some time – say a Sunday night for
example, cook up a big batch of rice, enough to last you three or four
evenings. Microwave the rice as you need it during the week – pair it
with a quickie stir-fry
one night perhaps, a fast Thai green
curry another, an Indian dal
made from canned chickpeas the next. Don’t have time to make something
saucy to pair with the rice? Fry up the rice with onions, garlic, ground
meat (beef, pork, turkey, whatever)and frozen peas, then drizzle with
sesame oil; or sauté it with garlic, onions, bell peppers, and canned
beans, seasoned with a little cider vinegar and hot sauce. Either way,
your pre-cooked rice will allow you to have a delicious one-dish meal
ready in less than fifteen minutes.

2(almost-) homemade soup
Keep your kitchen stocked with a good broth – either make large
batches of your own stock and keep convenient serving-size portions in
the freezer, or cheat a little and buy canned stock – and have a
tasty, nutritious, broth-and-stuff soup ready to eat in 20 minutes or
less. Chicken and veggie stocks are both good to have on hand. Add some
onions, herbs, mushrooms, diced potatoes and carrots (smaller chunks
will cook faster), leftover chicken, sausage, leftover rice or small
pasta bits – get creative … just about anything goes.